Sorry for the long absence... I encountered a very common occupational hazard for people who love to cook. I got burnt by boiling oil. But, now that every thing is back to the way it was (plus the ugly scar)... I'm back to cooking.

It was my grandmother's 83rd birthday, and the family was so excited. We wanted to make it extra special so we devised a plan. My aunt would be handling the main dish, my mom would be for appetizer, and I can handle the dessert section. So, after hours and hours of deliberation, we finally decided on the menu except for my part, which they told me to make whatever.

Now, whatever is a good plan, the downside being that it's too vague. So, i took out my handy dandy notebook, checked through all the recipes i've jotted down through out the years, and determined which ones i've never made before... Which was a bad idea, since it consisted about 3/4 of the pages. So, just to make it more fun, I picked out 3 of my favorite desserts (which i've never made), wrote it down on a piece of paper, rolled it, and whichever one i picked is the one I'm making which ended up being: HONG KONG STYLE EGG TARTS.

Now basically, egg tarts are flans in a tart shell. So, it really wasn't such a big deal, the only problem i had was i didn't have a blow torch or a salamander to give it that brûlée finish. So, I decided to make the egg tarts anyways and worry about the blow torch after.

I surmised that I should probably make around 50-60 egg tarts since we would have guests around that number. So, the night before, I started making the dough for the tart shells and blind bake it so I wouldn't have too many things to do the next day.

raw tart shells

Which by the way was a very very bad idea. The dough actually expands a lot even with the baking beans, and doesn't leave a lot of room for the custard. So, you end up having a lot of left over custard. Thank God I only tried blind baking 6 tart shells.

So, even if it means more work, I decided to just do everything on B-day. Which, started off fine, until the guests started arriving. Because, there were already too many people in the kitchen helping out with the other dishes, the guests actually wanted to watch us cook.

right out of the oven

Dessert Table

I ended up staying in the kitchen from 8 in the morning, to around 4 in the afternoon. Making 4 dozen Hong Kong Style Egg Tarts, and another 2 1/2 dozen Banana Cupcakes (because my aunt wanted it soo bad, and I just couldn't say no)

About Me

I am an amateur blogger who decided to finally LIVE life to it's fullest. I enjoy travel, food, fashion and everything life has to offer. Follow me in my adventures, as I try to navigate through life with no known compass-reading skills.